


i've got my ion you

by littlesunfl0wer



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Laundromat AU, M/M, University AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 07:39:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12649116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlesunfl0wer/pseuds/littlesunfl0wer
Summary: In the midst of Wonwoo’s laundromat dilemma, he meets the person who is the cause of it.  Alternatively: Biology and chemistry majors insisting one field is better than the other. Flirting ensues.





	i've got my ion you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [historiologies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiologies/gifts).



> This is for the most incredible person who brought us all together! Happy birthday, Cat! I apologise in advance for the lameness lvl 100 content, but I hope you like it! I love you and I hope you have a wonderful day~
> 
> Thank you Dani and Min for the encouragements! I really, really appreciate it <3

Wonwoo scowls. Having expected all the washing machines empty and free for him to use (considering it’s 3 o’clock in the morning on a dreary Tuesday night), what he’s met with is the exact opposite. The timers on each machine tell him that he has well over half an hour to wait, a strange assumption coming to him as well; they all have the same amount of time remaining, which must mean that some group of friends may have decided to do laundry together, collectively paid and pressed the start button to each one just for kicks, as though it would be a way of strengthening their friendship. Nothing is wrong with this, but Wonwoo deems it as inconvenient for him, especially in dire situations that call for him to finally drag his dirty laundry into the university accommodation’s laundromat.

Clicking his tongue with his poorly maintained laundry bag lugging behind him, he makes his way to the seating area to wait for exactly forty minutes. Wonwoo could conveniently just make his way back up to his room and brood over this mystery group of annoying friends for taking up all the washing machines at a time they shouldn’t be, but he just can’t afford to miss a free machine anymore. It has come to a point where he cannot put his laundry off anymore despite still having some clothes to wear. To put it simply, he’s ran out of underwear and it’s making life very hard for him.

Having no phone or book to occupy him for the next several minutes that mimic him dragging his laundry down to the laundromat, he slumps against his seat and stares at up at the ceiling, his glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. The dull flickering of the fluorescent light above doesn’t help in making him forget how late it is into the night, but at least it’s something that could entertain him for the time being. The staleness of the walls that enclose him inside the room make him feel more bored than claustrophobic, the lone cobweb housed on one corner only letting him know that no one really cares about anything in here except for the washing machines themselves.

The only telling of time for Wonwoo is the timer on the machines, the red numbers declining from the forties to eventually zero and there still seems to be no sign of the owner collecting their belongings. It takes about five machines eventually stopping their cycle (none of them having owners that take the clothes out on time) before Wonwoo’s patience runs out. The angered boy picks on a random washing machine to quite unapologetically dump its contents out onto the nearest bench since Wonwoo supposes he isn’t _that_ mean enough to leave them on the floor.

It's when Wonwoo was shoving his laundry into the barrel that the main door flings open and a stranger barges in, empty laundry bag swung casually over his shoulder. The stranger is panting, the yellow of his dishevelled hair almost matching the yellow in his avocado onesie, his tattered sleeves no longer fit for an adult like him (although the word ‘adult’ is even doubtable at this point). Should the inside of an avocado before the core even be _this_ yellow? Wonwoo is wearing a comfortable pair of grey joggers at least, his black graphic tee reading “biologists take cellfies”. Nothing close to awful avocados.

Wonwoo tries to act civil, swallowing wordlessly as he dumps his last pair of boxers into the machine and sprinkles a fair amount of lavender-scented washing powder into the barrel, but he can tell from the way the yellow-haired boy is looking at him that, well, this could well be his washing machine and his wet laundry now sat ungracefully on the bench across him.

“Uh…” The boy begins, seemingly at a loss for words.

"Um, I kinda didn’t have a choice? I’ve been waiting for an hour now.” Wonwoo offers, snaking his way out of whatever trouble this is, but he really just didn’t have a choice

"Uh..."

"Look-- Yours was the first one to finish. I wasn’t planning on waiting even more for another one to be done.” Wonwoo continues to defend himself, shutting the door and swiping his laundry card that he topped up earlier on as if to finalise everything and get the machine up and running; he wants to ultimately leave the stranger with no choice but to accept that _yes_ , this is Wonwoo’s washing machine now."

“Uh… no, it’s okay. These are all mine.” The stranger motions towards all the machines, the realisation dawning on Wonwoo upon remembering them all ending their cycles at similar times.

After Wonwoo’s eyes scan the whole room and they lastly fall upon the hideous fruit monster before him with his slanted eyes, sheepish gummy smile and a onesie that he seems to not have worn since before he hit puberty… It all makes sense to him now. All this nonsense makes complete sense to him now, and it takes a lot for Wonwoo to not double over and laugh-- he does anyway, his mouth falling open with almost no sound to begin with before a guffaw leaves him and sends him into an even bigger fit of laughter. Tears well up at the corners of his eyes, the stranger seemingly unfazed by his reaction and in fact, the avocado boy seems to even be enjoying whatever comic relief he’s currently providing.

“I swear this doesn’t happen often. Blame deadlines! Blame every single essay and group project I had to survive these past few weeks! Hey-- You’re not stopping…”

“Oh wow…” Wonwoo laughs the remaining bouts of laughter away, ending it with a small swipe under his eye with his thumb. “I’m sorry. I was really pissed off because I had to wait for so long but finding you here and hearing all that has to be the highlight of my week so far.”

The other boy grins animatedly and Wonwoo swears he’s now seeing avocados everywhere, not that he’s had a particular liking towards the fruit in the first place, but he knows he suddenly won’t be able to look at an avocado without wanting to collapse from the hilarity of this memory.

“I’m glad you find it funny at least. The best I could do in this situation was laugh too… there was really no way out.” The boy then diligently begins to move his wet laundry into the corresponding dryers above each washing machine, the smile never leaving his lips as Wonwoo watched, almost entranced by it all.

“Mind helping me put these into the dryer?” The boy asks and Wonwoo is on it right away, the clothes he threw out earlier on now thankfully inside a dryer, the embarrassment of being caught red-handed now catching up to him, but he wills this belated thought away by helping the other load the remaining dryers.

It’s after the dryers start spinning and their gentle rumbles spread across the room that the boy speaks again. “I’m Soonyoung, by the way. I live in B14.” Soonyoung smiles and offers his hand for Wonwoo to shake, his aura even warmer now that Wonwoo knows his name. It’s just as warm-sounding as his first impression and way warmer than all these dryers put together. It’s a surprise that Wonwoo’s glasses haven’t fogged up yet.

“Wonwoo. I guess I live right above you. B15.” Wonwoo shakes Soonyoung’s hand, the yellow-haired boy squeezing his own briefly before they both let go.

“How come I’ve never seen you before?” Soonyoung asks with a small tilt to his head, trying to recall if he’s ever seen Wonwoo around but is left with hardly any valuable information.

“I don’t know… maybe because you don’t do your laundry enough?” Wonwoo smirks, comfortable to be teasing right off the bat.

“Wow. Well if you wanna play that way, I just want to comment on how I saw you shoving your silk boxers into your machine! They’re baby pink too-- I didn’t think you’d be into that kind of thing.” Soonyoung crosses his arms with a raised brow, rendering Wonwoo a sputtering mess as he quickly tries to think of an excuse. It’s his mother who thinks his lucky boxers will help him with his degree, but he can’t possibly tell the other that.

Wonwoo wishes he could chuck avocados at Soonyoung right now.

But it’s not the avocados that Wonwoo throws Soonyoung’s way. It’s the onset of sass that the latter brings out of him so effortlessly, courtesy of more laundry teasing and playful jests bounced back between them after learning that while Wonwoo is a biology major, Soonyoung is a chemistry major.

“We’re not really supposed to be friends then, are we?”

“Are you kidding me? Just because there’s a general consensus that chemistry is better than biology doesn’t mean we can’t talk--”

“Um, no? Did you mean a general consensus that biology is better than chemistry because that’s definitely a fact.” Wonwoo interjects, eyes squinting behind his glasses.

“Well it’s a whole lot easier to print the periodic table on a mug than the entire human genome so there’s that…” Soonyoung shrugs noncommittally even though his statement says otherwise, aggravating Wonwoo in a way that sends him into rapid-fire thinking of why biology is the superior subject.

“Well, we have cute animal models! We have changes in scenery instead of being stuck in a lab all day!”

“You think fruit flies are cute?”

“You don’t--?” Wonwoo blinks, though he doesn’t tell Soonyoung that he’s quite impressed by the fact that he at least knows one animal model.

(Wonwoo fails to hear Soonyoung mutter ‘you’re cute’ under his breath.)

They conclude this heated debate with accepting that maybe physics is superior to both biology and chemistry. Wonwoo tells Soonyoung about his physicist friend, Jihoon, who doesn’t necessarily speak superiorly of physics. Jihoon just _knows_ that it _is_ superior and that it governs whatever the other two domains of science rely on. That’s until Soonyoung tells Wonwoo about his friend, Jun, who is a mathematician. They halt the topic there… but maybe not without sharing a few of their lame science jokes and pick-up lines.

(“Do you like chemistry?”

“No.”

“Just say you do!”

“Okay, fine! Yes. Why?”

“Because I’ve got my ion you.”)

(“I have one but it’s definitely not for you.”

“Just say it.”

“If I were an enzyme, I would be helicase just so I could unzip your genes.”

“Oh. OH.”

“You’re not getting any action in that avocado outfit, sorry.”

“I told you! I’m totally out of clothes!)

A little under an hour passes with Wonwoo fixating his gaze on Soonyoung’s radiant smile, if it wasn’t, of course, on the avocado core right around Soonyoung’s belly every time he caught himself staring a little too intensely and smiling too hard. Soonyoung was packing his dried laundry away and Wonwoo was in mid-sentence arguing about cats being superior to dogs, when the horror from Soonyoung saying he doesn’t like felines, transfers to horror about a rose pink item of clothing that he pulls out of his washing machine-- which unfortunately isn’t his lucky boxers. Don’t get him wrong, rose pink is a pretty colour, but it’s definitely not appropriate for a _lab coat_ out of all things.

“Shit.” Wonwoo mutters, deeming this disaster as his biggest downfall because _shit_ , he has labs tomorrow and he knows he most definitely cannot turn up in a pink lab coat.

“Oh _shit_.” Soonyoung reiterates upon realising the weight of the situation. Scientists take pride in their lab coats, or maybe just a select few who seem a little too dedicated to their chosen field, though of course anyone would think for it to be silly to stick out like a sore thumb (a pink one in this case) amidst the sea of white in the first place.

“Yeah, shit.” Wonwoo sighs defeatedly, tossing it into the dryer anyway along with the rest of his clothes, emptying the barrel until he catches sight of and pulls out a pair of red boxers-- the culprit responsible for the demise of his lab coat. Wonwoo himself did not expect this at all.

“Oh, that’s mine. Oh... Oh!” Soonyoung exclaims and hisses at the recognition of both the ownership and the responsibility he just took, stepping to carefully pry the red boxers out of Wonwoo’s grip. “You can take my lab coat if you want!”

“No, that’s okay--”

“No, it’s really okay! I’m so sorry. I-- Okay, your next three batches of laundry are on me. I really am sorry!” Soonyoung tucks the red boxers away into his laundry bag filled with freshly dried clothes, the tips of his ears red just like his boxers for reasons that Wonwoo somehow cannot understand.

Wonwoo thinks it’s partly his fault for not checking if the machine was fully empty before putting his clothes in, but the offer of free laundry is just too tempting. Maybe getting to see Soonyoung again after this is perhaps just as tempting too, but he would never say that out loud.

“Apology and offer accepted. As long as you promise not to take up the whole laundromat next time.” Wonwoo complies after much inner contemplation, a mellow chuckle leaving his lips that hint the trace of an amused smile.

“I mean I wouldn’t be doing it on my own if you take it up with me and we do laundry together from now on… I make a mean cup of coffee, if that’s even worthy as an incentive.” Soonyoung swings his laundry bag over his shoulder, and if it weren’t for the tint of red on his ears, Wonwoo wouldn’t have sensed the slight undertone of bashfulness about him.

Wonwoo purses his lips to one side unsurely, scanning the other up and down, from the top of his head and right down to where Soonyoung’s avocado onesie stops short around his ankles. “I don’t really see how laundry correlates with coffee but is this your way of asking me out on a date?”

“I was sort of going to ask you for your number first but laundry dates… That’s unique. So yes, I guess it is.”

“You already had me at free laundry and coffee.” Wonwoo grins. Soonyoung returns the grin and Wonwoo swears the whole room illuminates with it, the laundromat before Soonyoung’s appearance nothing compared to the brightness that it now possesses.

Wonwoo totally forgets that sunrise is now just two hours away.

-

The following day, or mere hours later rather, Wonwoo rushes to his lab session, fishing a lab coat out of his bag, the whiteness of it making him swell with pride as he slips it on. Inside one of its pockets is a note that he discovers is from the lab coat’s (terribly charming) owner.

_“Snack on avocados with me after your last lecture?_   
_Chemists think biologists are really cute ^-^_   
_\- SY”_


End file.
